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Updated: May 7, 2025
During the Civil War our navy produced, as it has always produced in every war, scores of capable officers, of brilliant single-ship commanders, of men whose daring courage made them fit leaders in any hazardous enterprise. In this respect the Union seamen in the Civil War merely lived up to the traditions of their service.
The United States navy was still weaker, and amounted merely to seven efficient frigates and nine small craft. There was no question of a contest between fleets, and though the numbers of the British warships enabled them to destroy American trade, they were ship for ship inferior to the American frigates, which were thus enabled to win an empty glory in single-ship encounters.
The movement of the convoy, and the "Guerrière's" need of refit, were linked events that brought about the first single-ship action of the war; to account for which fully the antecedent movements of her opponent must also be traced. At the time Rodgers sailed, the United States frigate "Constitution", 44, was lying at Annapolis, enlisting a crew.
Yesterday we fought what must be one of the most remarkable single-ship actions of the war. At 9 a.m. the look-out on the cliffs reported smoke to the northward. I got the anchor up and made ready to push off, but still kept the look-out ashore. At 9.30 he reported a destroyer in sight, which seemed serious if she chose to look into my particular nook.
As a naval historian James undertook to explain away the American victories in single-ship actions, a difficult task in which he acquitted himself with poor grace. Theodore Roosevelt is at his best when he chastises James for his venomous hatred of all things American.
The War of 1812 demonstrated the usefulness of a navy, not, indeed, by the admirable but utterly unavailing single-ship victories that illustrated its course, but by the prostration into which our seaboard and external communications fell, through the lack of a navy at all proportionate to the country's needs and exposure.
The odds, therefore, twelve to nine, were decidedly against the English; and it is likely that the advantage in single-ship power, class for class, was also against them. It must be recalled that at the time of his arrival Suffren found no friendly port or roadstead, no base of supplies or repair.
The United States fought the War of 1812 without allies, and while we gained a number of single-ship actions and notable victories on Lake Erie and Lake Champlain, we failed utterly in two campaigns to occupy Canada, and the final result of the conflict was that our national capitol was burned and our commerce absolutely swept from the seas.
This gentleman, Robert Carkett, had risen from before the mast, and after a lieutenancy of thirteen years had become post in 1758, by succeeding to the command when his captain was killed, in one of the most heroic single-ship fights of the British navy.
Throughout this period all the great admirals, all the famous single-ship fighters, whose skill reached its highest expression in our own navy during the war of 1812, commanded craft built and armed in a substantially similar manner, and fought with the same weapons and under much the same conditions.
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